середа, 16 жовтня 2013 р.

The odd, but popular, assertion that Java is dying can be made only in spite of the evidence, not because of it.

A recurring prejudice in the forums where the cool kids hang out (Hacker News, Reddit, etc.) is against Java, the language. Theoft-repeated sentimentsare that Java is verbose and fading in popularity. While I accept the first descriptor, I can find little evidence to support the latter.

Java certainly can be verbose. Until a year and a half ago, when Java 7 came out, a simple task such as writing to a file required a lengthy multi-step process, laden with "ceremony." In response to this pervasive wordiness, there sprang up several scripting languages, which were purpose-designed to spare developers from long syntactical passages to communicate a simple action: NetRexx, Groovy, Scala, and others. I'm a fan of Groovy and use it in my own projects, but mostly for the additional capabilities it provides (optional typing, closures, method injection, metaprogramming, and so on) rather than its concision.

When 1000 comments are posted on an editorial, it's worth considering what is being said.

My editorial last week, "If Java is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy" hit a nerve in various developer communities. Between Reddit, Hacker News, and Slashdot, it received more than 1,000 comments. Curiously, very few commenters disputed my central argument; namely, that the common prejudice that Java is dying is not supported by the reality. Here, however, are the major points they did make:

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